Comment by nonrandomstring | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nonrandomstring | Hacker News Reader

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nonrandomstring

I wholeheartedly agree with you. 30+ years in academia, I've taught all around the northern hemisphere at all kinds of universities and have written dozens of articles in Times Higher documenting the regress of higher learning institutions into kindergartens.

It's not just that universities are no longer fit places for teaching, learning and research, but something bigger is at play, which I see as "the death of adulthood". HE institutions are leaders in this 'infantilisation' which is toxic to self-development and personal responsibility.

A big factor is the aggressive intrusion of US BigTech; Turnitin, Grammarly etc... violating "proctoring" software, just a pathological and pointless quest systematise and lock-down absolutely everything.

Another reason universities have been morally upended is putting vanity and appearance before substance. They care more about how they are seen, in league tables and in social media, than they care about their students. Self-deluding PR has made universities worse than some of the most cringe corporations.

As a recovered "academic" prof (they are not really academies any longer but holding-pens and "degree vendors") I absolutely would not want my own kids to waste their time or money there.

I had a very permissive highschool experience (nonetheless academically rigorous) so it was a complete system shock to be dropped into a university system which infantilised every step and process - it was like being back in middle school except I expected autonomy and to be held accountable for my (lack of) actions / knowledge / learning.

And don't get me started on the administration which felt its need to weasel into every crevice, only to add unnecessary complexity and difficulty to otherwise simple processes (need to swap exam days with another student? - well, be prepared to start discussing it with admin months in advance with prepared letters from all stakeholders). Seemingly university administration only exists for the sake of having a university administration - and seems to be populated with the utter dregs of what that university put out that the market wouldn't hire (in other words: admin is where you go when you're too far up your own ass for a real business to get value from you).

As a result, after a while most classmates didn't or couldn't think for themselves about anything. It was overall an extremely frustrating experience and I couldn't get out fast enough. I actually landed in hot water because I skipped too many classes (in my last year I only went to uni about 5 times, each for 1 of my 5 exams) but my grades were so much higher than the rest of the cohort they decided to allow me to graduate so as to improve their overall GPA for the class.

The infantilisation starts well before higher education. My dorms were filled with people who couldn’t even take care of themselves at a basic level, such as doing laundry and keeping their room even moderately clean. Rich 18 year olds living in their own filth like pigs in a sty.

TBH I lived like a total animal in first year (freshman) Have you seen "The Young Ones" [0] That show was not to far off reality. But there was scaffolding and support to grow up, separate and begin taking serious responsibility for every level of shit in life. I had excellent personal tutors who got me through some rocky patches. Exactly zero of my trouble came from the uiversity system itself. Today I see that being 100% of what harms students. The institution itself has become a toxic nightmare, the kids have to wrestle with it in addition to their studies.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Young_Ones_(TV_series)

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